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25.10.2019

Eight rooms on the first floor of the Alexander Palace’s East Wing with the private quarters of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna are expected to open for visiting in 2020.

This great and long-expected news was announced to mass media on 24 October 2019 as Tsarskoe Selo was demonstrating progress in the Alexander Palace’s restoration since the start in 2012.

A project to turn the palace building into a multifunctional museum complex with permanent displays, temporary exhibitions, research work rooms, conference halls, a library, a children’s centre and service spaces, was designed by Nikita Yaveyn’s architectural bureau Studio 44 in 2011. Work in the basement was started by PSB ZhilStroy Ltd in 2012 and finished in 2016 in order to enlarge its space to house ticket desks, cloakrooms, a museum shop and cafés. The restoration project will not be completed earlier than 2022 and is financed by Russia’s Ministry of Culture, the Museum and donations (such as Rub 17 million for the Mountain Hall from the charitable foundation TransSoyuz).

Closed since 2015, the permanent displays on the first floor should re-open next year with the eight rooms of Nicholas and Alexandra, who chose the palace to be their residence in 1905 and lived there until 1917.

The eight rooms include: the Retinue Room, Imperial Bedroom, Mauve Room and Palisander Drawing Room of Alexandra’s quarters and the Reception Room, Working Study, Tsar’s Bathroom (Moorish Room) and Valet’s Room of Nicholas'.

The interior restoration is based on the Autochromes of 1917 and photographs taken by the imperial family members. The decorative fabrics – chintz fabric in the Bedroom, silk in the Mauve Room and rep in the Palisander Drawing Room – have been remade after the samples stored at Tsarskoe Selo and Pavlovsk. The restorers preserve all the surviving original decorative features, such as the oak wall panels, wood coffered ceilings and ceramic tiles.

After the eight rooms, a few more of Nicholas and Alexandra’s quarters will follow, including the Maple and Corner Drawing Rooms, Nicholas II’s State Study and the Library Rooms.

The private quarters of Nicholas and Alexandra were designed in the 1890s in place of the former retinue rooms by the architects Alexander Vidov and Alexander Bakh. After Vidov’s death, their redesign was continued by Silvio Dagnini and later by Roman Meltzer.

What has been accomplished in the rooms:

Reception Room of Nicholas II: Restoration of the oak panels, parquet, fireplace, ceiling and fabrics, and reconstruction of a built-in divan.  

Working Study of Nicholas II: Reconstruction of the wall panels, curtains, walnut furniture, fireplace and carpet.

Tsar’s Bathroom: Recreation of the tile patterns and colours, based on ceramic fragments found beneath the floor. Reconstruction of the fireplace, pool, partition, fabrics and carpet.   

Palisander Drawing Room: Original sample based reconstruction of the fabric wall lining, curtains, palisander panels and fireplace.

Mauve Room: Original sample based reconstruction of the fabric wall lining, curtains, built-in furniture, carpet, wood panels, fireplace and painted freeze.

Imperial Bedroom: Reconstruction of the alcove, fabric wall lining, curtains and carpet.